babybloomr

Ok, I KNOW we have a lot to catch up on! But you gotta give me another day or so– this house is (even more) frighteningly disorganized (than usual), and I think we may be having a few people over to watch the Dove Awards with us tomorrow night which requires a full court press…

A brief summary of our adventures in the ATL (with more to come):

Truly amazing night, Russ’ tribute was stellar, the girls had such a good time and walked the red carpet like they were born to it, (even if Charlotte did immediately change from her rockin’ new heels into her comfortable old flip flops for the telecast), we had four of our Faroe Islands friends there for the occasion, AND WE LOOKED FOR MOMMA LLOYD THE WHOLE DANG NIGHT and never found her! Seriously, at one point I took my life into my hands and stood up on a chair to scan the room. And trust me, it should have been a lot easier to spot a beautiful head of white hair in THAT crowd than at a Gaither concert! Russ even called her phone and left a message to try to arrange a meeting, but then we realized that we were calling her home phone in SC, which wasn’t going to do much good. We were all so sorry to miss hugging her sweet self, but I totally understand her son’s protective decision to not try to brave the crowd– it was kind of crazy. And just knowing that she was there enjoying it all with us was almost as good as seeing her… OK, not really, we wanted to get our hands on her– but we are still so touched and grateful that her thoughtful son made it possible for her to be there, even if she did almost end up in the lap of the man in front of her!

And speaking of Awards shows…

As you may or may not know, live-tweeting awards shows is kind of my ministry. I come by it naturally, having grown up in a family chock full of weisenheimers and smart asses who used to annually gather around the ol’ TV set in Little Rock and make merciless fun of the contestants on the Miss America pageant. Social media has simply given me a much larger living room, metaphorically speaking. These days, one of my favorite partners-in-crime during those kind of events is Matthew Paul Turner, aka @jesusneedsnewpr. He is a prolific writer, compelling speaker, loving husband and tender father. Master of the sardonic aside and withering retort, he unfailingly manages to piss off a few of his many followers every time he live-tweets an awards show, which always amuses me because A) he’s truly not offensive or obscene, he’s just FUNNY and B) hello, if you are already following him, his sense of humor should not come as a big shock to you! At any rate, he makes me snorty-laugh on a regular basis, and before every Academy Awards show I try to get a betting pool started to guess how many people will huffily unfollow him by the end of the show– so far no luck, which is a shame because I would CLEAN UP, yo.

So, anyway– though we’ve corresponded for a couple of years now, I’ve only met him IRL once, when a sweet friend of mine was interviewing him for an online magazine and let me tag along. I managed to keep my piehole shut until they finished the interview, and then spent the next hour or so exchanging Christian music biz war stories with him and talking about families/love/mercy/redemption and faith until the Starbucks staff started giving us the stink-eye because they needed the table. I’m crazy about him. So when I found out about THIS yesterday, I was embarrassingly touched and inordinately proud. #19, baby– ‘Bloomr Nation has arrived!

Leave you with a couple of photos from The Big Doin’s:

**The Dove Awards telecast is tomorrow night, Tuesday the 24th, at 7:00 pm central time (8:00 pm EST) with an encore showing at 9:00 pm central time (10:00 pm EST). Be sure to check and see if your cable company carries the GMC channel, (it’s 189 here in Nashville on Comcast.)